


Past Perfect

by lordlings



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordlings/pseuds/lordlings





	Past Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Art and Absolute Pitch of Healing](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/6896) by art type. 



"I had them build this room for you," says the Tenth, and opens the door.

Hayato walks in and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. The room is high-ceilinged and golden-lit; tall, majestic windows line the far and eastern walls, and beyond them an exuberant Mediterranean-style garden which Hayato knows cannot possibly exist this far under the ground explodes in a cacophony of greens and yellows. The room itself is spacious, unnecessarily so: all it contains is a grand piano right in the center of it. The stool is vacant. Hayato cannot decide how he feels about that.

"Bianchi said you were very good as a child, and I thought you might miss it," the Tenth begins, tentatively, and Hayato sucks in a breath; he'd forgotten the Tenth was next to him. His voice drags Hayato back to the present, and Hayato clings to the sound like a lifeline. It's not the time to be thinking of something that happened decades ago.

"You don't like it?" the Tenth asks, scrutinizing Hayato's face for an answer.

Hayato shakes himself out of his daze and does his best to smile and reassure the Tenth. "I really like it," he says, pushing the maelstrom of sudden conflicting emotions out of his voice. "I'm honored you went to all this trouble for me, Tenth. Thank you."

The Tenth smiles, then, obviously relieved. He says, "Happy birthday, Hayato."

 

 

Hayato stands in the middle of the room and tries to sort himself out. The Tenth is already gone; he is as busy as would be expected of the head of one of the most prominent mafia families of the world, and has already spared enough time preparing this for Hayato and then showing it to him in person. For that, Hayato is thankful; he is truly grateful to the Tenth for being this kind to him and making time for Hayato on this day.

While Hayato always insists on going all-out to celebrate the Tenth's birthday every year, he is not nearly that excited about his own. He only mentioned the date that one time right after he joined the family, before Mukuro and the battle for the rings and the trip to the future-that-wasn't, but the Tenth remembers every single time it rolls around. If it weren't for him, Hayato's birthdays would be positively hateful to him. A day on which the past is celebrated and glorified: a past which in Hayato's case can be summarized in a bunch of deprecating looks, a veil of dynamite smoke and his heartbeat in his ears as he fled from one Italian town to the next.

There is only one scene in his memories from that time that gives him a warm feeling: a day spent with his mother in a room much like this one, inside Father's castle, the piano's strings vibrating with sounds that filled the empty space in the room with warmth. This memory is what is bugging him now, he decides. This looks just like the room in his memories; even the garden outside is identical. Perhaps Bianchi remembers it too, well enough to have described it to the illusionists. Everything is familiar in its unfamiliarity, unbearably empty.

Hayato sits on the stool and his hands automatically move to hover above the ivory black and white. The piano looks brand new; probably is, for which Hayato considers himself fortunate. He knows Bianchi had his mother's piano brought over from Italy some years ago, but he's grateful they didn't move it into this room: a new and impersonal piano makes it much easier to detach his thoughts from the melancholy bubbling in his chest.

Hayato sits up straighter and tries a simple chord progression, starting in G and adding a third, then a fifth. The sound is clear and beautiful; it hangs in the air for a few moments before fading. Hayato's fingers press the keys without disrupting the round shape of his hands: the wrists lifted slightly and his fingers curved, like holding something precious and breakable in his palm. The fake sunlight streaming in through the windows shines on the spotless keys and makes them look perfect and unmarred, in stark contrast to Hayato's hands which are covered in scratches Uri's given him and old scars from when he couldn't use explosives without burning his own hands.

He stands up from the stool and drapes the curtains closed over the windows. The room becomes dark, dismal.

 

 

"Can you even see anything in here?" the Tenth asks, dismayed, when he returns late into the evening. "You should open the curtains. Chrome put her best efforts into creating that garden for you, you know."

"It was too bright for my eyes, before," Hayato lies, but stands to let the light in anyway.

"It should be better now the sun's down," the Tenth says, just as Hayato pulls the curtains open and lets a ray of artificial moonlight into the room. He stares at it in something like awe for a few moments, checks his wristwatch, and then stares some more. Beside him, the Tenth stifles what can only be termed a 'giggle'. "The amount of light varies depending on the time of day and the conditions outside. It's supposed to rain and snow as well, if that's what's happening on the surface."

"Incredible," Hayato murmurs, and makes a mental note to come down here and observe the garden next time the weather misbehaves on the surface. The scientist in him feels giddy like a very small child with a new toy. "I'll make sure to thank Chrome next time I see her."

"Yes." The Tenth smiles and walks over to the piano. "Have you tried playing it yet? Is the sound good?" He stabs the high C with one stiff finger, experimentally, then withdraws his hand lightning-fast and gives Hayato a sheepish look. "Couldn't resist."

Hayato can't help smiling a bit at that. "I've played a little," he says, "but I think it will take some time for me to get used to the piano again. It's been so long, I can't remember any of the pieces I used to play." He does remember the one his mother played for him every single time she came to meet him, but he's not sure it would be a good idea to start from there. The room reminds him of her too much already. "I'll practice when I have free time and try to get back into shape."

"I'm glad," says the Tenth. "I'd really like to hear you play sometime."

Hayato feels warm, proud. When the Tenth excuses himself to go to bed, he sits at the piano and extricates crippled melodies from his memory through concentration and sheer willpower. He works at it until his watch beeps, announcing the arrival of midnight and the end of his birthday.

 

 

The day after Hayato's birthday is slow by Vongola standards. Hayato and the other Guardians have their routine meeting with the Tenth in the morning, which ends earlier than usual because there are no urgent issues that need to be discussed at length. After that, Hayato gets dragged to the training room by Sasagawa for a spar, which much to Hayato's displeasure ends in a draw, and then he's free to do what he will until the afternoon, when Dino and some Cavallone men will be dropping by to talk business with the Tenth. Before he quite realizes it, his steps are leading him downstairs to the piano room.

When he opens the door, Bianchi is waiting for him, perched on the stool. She's wearing her goggles. "I rescued your old music sheets," she says, and points at a stack of yellowing papers on top of the closed lid of the piano.

"I can't believe you kept these," he says, taking them gingerly in his hands and depositing them on the floor. He sorts through them with amazement. The first notes on the scores send tingles of recognition up his arm where his fingers touch the paper.

"I had them sent along with father's piano," Bianchi explains, and sits down on the floor next to him. "You should make copies. These seem about to turn to dust."

They sit there for some time, hunched over the music, occasionally stopping to look at particular pieces that jig their memory. Bianchi has played some of these pieces too, when she was a young girl and not a renowned hitman. She still plays from time to time, she says.

"We should play a piece for four hands. Mozart would be nice," she tells him, with the slightest twinge of hesitation in her voice that Hayato can't even be sure he's not imagining. "I'll also bring you cookies, next time." At his look of alarm, she adds, "From the bakery Haru and Kyoko like so much. I won't be involved in making them."

It occurs to Hayato suddenly that this is the first civil and moderately long conversation he's had with his sister in years. This makes him feel a little awkward, so he turns his gaze down to the music sheets and says, barely loud enough to be heard, "Okay."

 

 

Bianchi stays on the floor and Gokudera takes the stool. He picks out a score at random from the stack and begins to play it. His hands remember the motions, but they have lost their agility from lack of practice. They can't keep up the fast tempo of the piece. His fingers miss a note during a scale and Hayato curses under his breath.

"Stop cursing and concentrate on playing," Bianchi tells him in Italian. "You just have to keep trying."

"Shut up," Gokudera replies in Japanese. "Don't need you telling me that."

He tries again, _da capo_. Same hectic tempo; he refuses to bring it down a notch to make it easier for his fingers. They could play this perfectly at this tempo years ago; they can damn well do it now. But they stutter and miss like before. Hayato grunts but keeps playing to the end as if nothing were wrong. Next time he plays it, he will do so perfectly.

 

 

Hayato is hammering away at an _étude_ to pick up speed in both hands when there's a knock on the door. He continues to play the scales one after another while he ponders whether to get up and open the door or pretend he didn't hear anything.

"Hayato, it's me, Tsuna," comes the Tenth's voice from the other side. "May I come in?"

Hayato stands up instantly and goes to let him in. "Is anything wrong, Tenth?"

"No, everything's okay." He's carrying a stack of folders under one arm. "Actually, I was wondering if I could come down here to read these. The study's too noisy, with Giannini upgrading the security measures."

Hayato nods. "Of course, Tenth."

"The door was locked. Are you sure I'm not bothering you?" asks the Tenth, hesitant, not moving from the threshold. "Should I leave you alone?"

"No, this is fine," Hayato says, means it.

When he turns around to return to the piano, he walks headfirst into a dilemma. He cannot play the piano standing, and there is only the one stool. Bianchi is the only one who's ever been inside the room at the same time as Hayato, and she never stays very long. There is no place for someone else to sit. Before Hayato can think of a solution, the Tenth walks up to the piano and plops down onto the floor next to it.

"Tenth, please take the stool," Hayato says, ashamed to think the Tenth Vongola Boss should have to sit on the floor when there's a stool in the room.

"It's okay," the Tenth says, laughs, like the tinkling of the high notes of the keyboard. "You can't play while standing, right?"

"I'll go upstairs to find another stool for myself. Please, I insist."

"But I insist more. Sit on your stool, Hayato," says the Tenth, wry. He puts down the folders and begins to sort through the reports inside. "I miss sitting on the floor like this. Mafia bosses aren't allowed to sprawl."

Hayato wants to protest, but then he looks at the Tenth, and he remembers summer afternoons spent lazing around on the porch of the Sawada household, with the old electric fan turned on at max power and the sound of Lambo and I-Pin squealing at the Tenth's mother in the background. Then fireworks in the evening, all the gang together at the summer festival, the girls in yukata, and the Tenth staring wide-eyed at the flowers of fire blossoming recklessly in the night sky. Hayato feels a smile tugging at his lips.

The Tenth looks up from his reports. "You seem to be recalling something nice," he says, smiles.

Hayato feels his face heat up as he nods. He sits on the stool, places his hands on the keys, and begins playing a different piece from before, something slow, lazy and warm. The smell of summer burns his nostrils all through the playing.

 

 

After that, other members of the family that are not the Tenth take to visiting Hayato at the piano room from time to time. They come in when Hayato's playing the piano and sit on the floor, say nothing, listen. Even Yamamoto is quiet, the few times he drops by. Hayato is not as surprised by this as he would perhaps have been, before. This room casts a spell that moves people's hearts. It envelops people and creates harmony between them for a few precious moments. Once out of the door, the spell is broken, but a tiny part of it remains behind to fill the empty spaces of the room, so that it doesn't feel so empty anymore.

Hayato still sees the afterimage of his mother: smiling, playing the piano in a room much like this one, but it does not strangle his heart anymore. The memory of her presence by his side fills this room, permeates every particle in the air with incredible warmth. Hayato imagines that she lives on here, in every breath he takes, in the ivory keys and the way they tug at the strings in the heart of the piano.

Hayato is ready. He sits down, and plays that piece, for her.

 

 

This room changes people. Perhaps it can even heal them, given time.

The Tenth seems to understand, in that uncanny way of his. He stands up from the floor, walks to the back of the piano, and lifts the lid. The sound of the strings rises out of the piano louder that before, clearer, as if possessed of a life of its own. Hayato thinks he might be able to touch it, if he reached out his hand.

"Your playing is very beautiful," the Tenth says. "I wish everyone could hear it, wherever they are."

Hayato doesn't say 'thank you'. He feels that, if he did, something precious in the air would shatter.

"You smile more these days," the Tenth says. "I'm glad."

He's standing right behind Hayato now. If Hayato leaned back in his stool, he could rest his head on the Tenth's chest.

"You make playing the piano look easy," the Tenth says.

Hayato reaches the end of the piece, and his hands hover on the keys before settling on his knees. "Would you like to learn, Tenth?" he asks, and turns around.

The warm, unguarded smile on the Tenth's face catches him off-guard. "I wish you'd stop that already. My name is Tsuna, not Tenth," he says, wry. "And if I started playing the piano here, I'm sure this room would lose its popularity. I would be a failure as a pianist, Hayato. There are no special bullets to learn piano. Don't even think about it."

Hayato reaches out and takes the Tenth's right hand in his, places their thumbs on the G key and from there he builds a simple chord, pressing the Tenth's fingers onto the keys with his own to create harmony. He keeps his hand round around the Tenth's and his fingers slightly curved, the right shape for holding something precious in his palm. His heart pounds in his chest. "Everyone sucks in the beginning," he says. "But I'm sure you would become a very good pianist."

The Tenth laughs and shakes his head, but he doesn't withdraw his hand. "Too lazy. No motivation whatsoever," he says. "Why would I want to learn piano? This way, I can always ask you to play for me."

His hand closes around Hayato's. The shape is round, perfect.

"You'll play for me, won't you?" he asks. His face has turned red.

"Of course I'll play for you," Hayato replies, smiles, braces himself. "Tsuna."


End file.
